It is recommended to eat one serving of fruit or vegetables five times a day. This amounts to about 600g fruit or vegetables every day. This is the idea some smoothie producers are marketing and praise their products as substitutions.
Smoothies unavoidably contain what their ingredients contain. Therefore, it is not surprising that you can find some components of pesticides in the mix. Out of 18 smoothies, ten products (loose and prepackaged) contained in between one and five traces of pesticides. Since there are many possible uses of the ingredients of smoothies, there are currently no legal limits to how much the product can contain. "These limits are only applicable for the fruits or vegetables," says Matthias Denker, deputy head of department of the foodstuffs inspection facility LALLF in Rostock, Germany. "As far as we are able to tell from these variables, none of the products exceeded the maximum amount of traces."
One sample of freshly squeezed orange juice seemed conspicuous. They were able to find three treatment agents for the peel of citrus fruit -Phenylphenol, Imazalil and Thiabendazol. "This means that for the production of this juice, treated oranges were used," Denker explained. "In this and many other cases, the exposure to pesticide is the lowest in certified organic products," said the chemist.
Two of the 18 samples were objected to, due to insufficient labelling.
"Smoothies are basically the most expensive way to consume fruits and vegetables." The trendy product can be an addition to one's diet but should not be substituting fresh fruits and vegetables. Many prepackaged smoothies contain heated components such as juices, which do not count into the daily intake.
